


Smoke Above the Timberline

by Makosrightarm



Category: Firewatch (Video Game), Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: AU, F/M, Forests, Mystery, Past, slow burn GET IT
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 23:22:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9851486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Makosrightarm/pseuds/Makosrightarm
Summary: "Why does anyone come out here? To get away. To escape."It's the summer of 1992, and Marinette Dupain-Cheng has not had a great run of luck. The first half of the year took almost everything she cared about, and so when she gets the chance to run away - to spend a quiet summer as a fire lookout in Boise National Forest, far away from home - she takes it. It's there she meets a young man named Adrien, a fellow lookout and her supervisor, and it's there that events unfold that will force Marinette to confront her past, her future, and a mystery that takes her deep into untamed wilderness.AU inspired by the video game Firewatch.





	

Smoke Above the Timberline

Chapter One: Point of Origin

  
1992\. June. Boise National Forest, Idaho.

 

Day One.

 

“Oof!”

 

Marinette Dupain-Cheng slid off the side of her cot and onto the hard wooden floor of her lookout. She rubbed her head as she struggled to her feet, her skin scratching uncomfortably against the splintery planks.

 

“Something to keep in mind,” she grumbled as she reached under the cot for her pack, where her clothes were still stored. She had reached her lookout around midnight, and had found herself lacking the energy needed to fully unpack. “Cot is not as roomy as my bed back home.”

 

She yanked a collection of clothes from the pack. Marinette was more concerned with simply getting dressed than coordinating any particular outfit, and the product of her efforts - a garish ensemble consisting of a sickly green polo, dark purple cargo shorts, and a pair of Timberland boots - would definitely not be showing up on a Paris runway any time soon. Still, it wasn’t as if there were too many people out in the wilderness of Idaho to bear witness to this affront to the sense of vision, so Marinette found herself unable to care.

 

At last dressed for the day, Marinette turned her attention to the reason she had been startled awake - the chipper voice emanating from the handheld radio on her desk.

 

“Listen, Deadwood, I’m going to keep yelling until you answer, so you might as well get out of bed and pick up now!” the voice - male - declared. If voices could grin, this one did. There was a playfulness about the voice, as if it were always telling a joke that you were in on. It had the potential to be charming, but after eight minutes of hearing it needle her to get up and respond, Marinette had discovered that charm only carried so far.

 

Before the voice could harangue her further, Marinette swiped the radio and pushed the talk button. 

 

“I’m up!” she said, failing to disguise her annoyance. “You don’t need to tell me to get up anymore!”

 

“Good morning to you too, sunshine,” the voice laughed. There was a bit of an accent to it, almost undetectable, but decidedly European. “Well, I say morning. It’s actually about four in the afternoon. The trip really took a lot out of you, huh?”

 

Marinette glanced out the window of her lookout, and sure enough, the sun had long since passed its apex and was beginning preparations to retire for the evening.

 

“Sorry,” Marinette said, blushing in embarrassment. “I was driving all day yesterday, and-”

 

“Hey, it’s fine,” the voice assured her. “This isn’t a 9-to-5, I don’t mind if you sleep in every now and again.” After a moment of consideration, it added, “but my bosses do, and I’m the one who gets in trouble, so try not to make a habit of it.”

 

“Duly noted,” Marinette said, sliding into the chair at her desk. 

 

“So, this is your first time working as a lookout, right, Deadwood?” the voice asked.

 

“I have a name,” Marinette said. “You don’t have to call me by my lookout’s name.”

 

“You sure?” the voice asked, that impish charm reappearing. “‘Deadwood’ is pretty cool. I’ve always been a sucker for code names. You could call me, ‘Le Chat Noir!’”

 

Marinette looked at the radio, not quite sure what she had just heard. “...What?” she asked.

 

“‘Le Chat Noir!’” the voice repeated.

 

“...Why?”

 

“It means-”

 

“I know what it means,” Marinette said, rolling - not her eyes, but her voice. “I speak French. That’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking  _ why _ .”

 

“Well, it’s… it’s cool!” the voice insisted. “Le Chat Noir, it was a cool place, you know, historically. People like Paul Signac and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec went there. It shows how cool I am.”

 

“Maybe we should forget about the code names,” Marinette suggested, “before you dig yourself any deeper.”

 

“Fine, fine,” the voice grumbled. “We’ll be boring, we’ll do it your way. I am Sir Adrien Agreste, knight of Jackson Peak Lookout, your benevolent overlord for the summer.”

 

“Marinette Dupain-Cheng,” Marinette replied, ignoring Adrien’s yeomanly flourish.

 

“Well, good to meet you, Marinette,” Adrien said politely. “We’ll be in contact a lot this summer, so I hope we’ll become good friends.”

 

_ Not much chance of that _ , Marinette thought to herself.  _ Not with how annoyingly peppy this guy is _ .

 

“Alright, Marinette,” Adrien continued, snapping her out of her thoughts. “Couple things before we get started. Can you look over at the table in the center of your lookout for me? What do you see there?”

 

Obligingly, Marinette turned her attention to the center of the room. Upon the table, laid upon a pair of metal tracks, was a silvery metal disc with two brass protrusions on either end, one which looked like a metal ruler and the other which was centered by a crosshair. These protrusions were connected by a thin, glinting line of measuring tape.  On closer inspection, what had appeared to be one disc was, in fact, two, with the bottom covered in a series of notches, each with a number above it. The surface of the top disc was glass, covering a topographic map. Marinette had never seen anything quite like it.

 

“It, uh, it looks kind of like a flying saucer,” Marinette admitted.

 

Adrien laughed. “I  _ wish _ we had aliens out here,” he said. “Have something  _ interesting _ happen for a change. No, that marvelous piece of equipment you see before you is called an Osborne Fire Finder, part and parcel to our job out here in Boise National Forest.”

 

“So, how does it work?” Marinette asked, approaching the device and sliding her finger along the glass pane. “Is there a button or something? How does this find fires?”

 

“The Fire Finder doesn’t do all the work,” Adrien explained. “First, you have to see some smoke out through the window.”

 

“So,  _ I  _ find the fire,” Marinette said, rotating the top disc of the Fire Finder back and forth with her finger.

 

“You find the  _ smoke _ ,” Adrien corrected. “That doesn’t give you all the information you need. Without the Fire Finder, you could eyeball it and say the fire looks like it’s about twenty miles west, but the Fire Finder lets us get more precise, and lets us determine the azimuth of a fire.”

 

“Pretend  I have no idea what that means.”

 

“The azimuth is the directional bearing of the fire,” Adrien said. “When you see smoke, what you’ll want to do is look through the hole in the tall brass measure and through the crosshair, and rotate the top of the Fire Finder so it’s exactly aligned with the smoke.”

 

“Like shooting a rifle,” Marinette offered.

 

“That’s what they tell me,” Adrien agreed. “Never shot a gun myself, so I wouldn’t know. Anyway, once you’ve aligned the crosshair, you’ll want to check the bottom of the Fire Finder, the part with the notches. Those notches will give you a heading in degrees. The Fire Finder is aligned with the cardinal directions, so you’ll get an exact direction that way too, so for example you could determine that the smoke is 120 degrees due east. From there, you read the map along the measuring tape to the direction and heading of the smoke. You’ll have to use your best judgment to determine about where along the tape the point of origin is, but once you make the call, you’ll be able to calculate the distance.”

 

“They didn’t tell me I’d have to use math for this job,” Marinette said with a joking groan.

 

“Afraid there’s no escape from math, even out here,” Adrien quipped back. “Don’t worry, though, it’s simple stuff. Each inch on the measuring tape represents two miles of real distance, so you can make your calculation based on that. Once you have the direction and heading, you can  call in dispatch and let them know about it.”

 

“And that’s my whole job?” Marinette asked with a grin. It seemed surprisingly simple.

 

“Well, not your whole job,” Adrien replied, causing Marinette’s grin to become a frown. As if sensing Marinette’s disappointment, Adrien continued, “believe me, after a while you’ll thank me for that. No one can stay cooped up in a tiny room looking out the window for a whole summer without going stir crazy.”

 

“Yeah, going stir crazy is probably best to be avoided,” Marinette agreed, returning to her chair, which seemed to grow more uncomfortable each time she sat in it. “So what else am I supposed to do out here?”

 

“Well, there aren’t enough bona fide rangers out here in the sticks to make sure everything is ship-shape, so from time to time I’ll send you around to check in on things, make sure the regulations are being followed, and just generally hold down the fort in the absence of much higher authority. We may not be rangers, but we still have a  _ range _ of duties!”

 

There was a long, sickening pause as the words left the radio and assaulted Marinette’s ears.

“A  _ range _ of duties!” Adrien repeated after getting no response.

 

“Was that-” Marinette pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. “Was that a  _ pun _ ?”

 

“What’s wrong? Does my humor en- _ range _ you?”

 

“Do you make a habit of making bad puns?” Marinette asked, dreading the reply.

 

“Puns, quips, witticisms, knock-knock jokes,” Adrien said cheerfully. “I’ve got  _ range _ .”

 

“And you said I’m stuck with you the entire summer?”

 

“Sure as Boise isn’t in Boise County!”

 

“I think I might go stir crazy even if I get out of the lookout from time to time.”

 

“Speaking of which,” Adrien said with surprising urgency, Marinette’s remark having seemingly reminded him of something important, “can you look out your window for me? A bit to the southeast.”

 

Marinette did so, and quickly realized what had made Adrien sound so urgent. In the distance, she could see a few thin black lines of smoke lifting above the treetops.

 

“I see it,” Marinette confirmed. “Should I use the Fire Finder?”

 

“No need,” Adrien replied. “We know where the smoke is coming from, Deadwood Campground, down around near Lowman.”

 

“Oh,” said Marinette, not sure what was being asked of her. “Well, what’s the problem, then? Are people not allowed to have a fire at a campground?”

 

“At the moment, they are,” Adrien replied. “Provided they can keep it under control and not leave it burning. However, the family that was renting Deadwood checked out about an hour ago. They forgot to fully extinguish their fire when they left. It probably won’t grow into anything, but I need you to head down to the campground to put it out anyway. Safety first, you know.”

 

“I’m surprised you didn’t have a pun for that one,” Marinette remarked, walking over to her pack and dumping the rest of her clothes out of it. She’d clean up when she got back, but for now she needed to get her supplies in order and head out. 

 

“My knightly pride is wounded, milady!” Adrien gasped with exaggerated shock. “I would never joke about something as important as fire safety!”

 

“Then I’ll try and make sure our conversations mainly _ revolve _ around fire safety,” Marinette said, filling her pack with her map, compass, thermos, ropes, and anything else she might need out on the trail. “How do I get to the campground from here?”

 

“It’s a pretty straight shot,” Adrien answered. “Just follow Julie Creek down southeast and you’ll be there in no time.”

 

“Alright,” Marinette responded, putting the final touches on her packing and slinging her pack across her back. “I’ll radio in if I have any questions.”

 

“And  _ I’ll _ radio in if I think of any new puns,” Adrien assured her.

 

“That is definitely not necessary,” Marinette grimaced, glancing back out the window to make sure what direction to go.

 

“And yet I do it anyway,” Adrien said, his voice glowing with pride. “It’s that sort of above-and-beyond attitude that’s gotten me where I am today.”

 

Marinette made no reply, choosing instead to swing open the door of her lookout and step out into the warm summer’s air. There were no clouds in the sky, which meant Marinette was fully exposed to the sun. She took a moment to apply sunscreen before heading off on her way. “Safety first,” as Adrien had said.

 

She moved down the trail that led up to her lookout, the brown dirt of the path crunching underfoot. The ponderosas that lined the trail were lush, green and inviting, and their sentimental piny aroma sent Marinette drifting into her thoughts as she followed the path, the branches of  ponderosas shivering in the scant breeze.

 

_ So, Marinette _ , she thought to herself,  _ let’s take stock of your life so far. 28 and not getting any younger, your best chance at a fulfilling career gone, the guy you thought you were in love with gone, your dad gone, no prospects, and no future. All you’ve got ahead of you is a summer in Idaho with some jag who took comedy lessons from the 19th century. All in all, could be worse. _

 

She arrived at the water - Julie Creek, Adrien had called it - and followed it. The scent of pine was still in the air, and the gentle gurgling of the creek lulled Marinette further into her reverie.

 

_ This is peaceful _ , she remarked.  _ This is what I came out here for. Peace, and quiet, and distance from everything else. Just an escape from life for a while. The nearest town only has 20 people in it, and I have four months of nature and solitude ahead of me. Maybe it won’t be so bad. Even if I have to deal with- _

 

As if on cue, Adrien’s voice crackled through the speaker of the radio, clipped securely to the waist of Marinette’s shorts. “So, I have a question,” he said, forcing Marinette out of her introspection. She reached for the radio and pushed the button.

 

“You know, I was just starting to enjoy nature,” she complained, prompting Adrien to chuckle.

 

“Believe me, you’ll have more than enough nature to enjoy over the summer,” he said. “I just need to ask you something, it’s gotten stuck in my mind and it’s gonna drive me crazy if I don’t figure it out.”

 

“What is it?” Marinette asked cautiously. Her brief time getting to know Adrien had not provided any insight into the kinds of questions he might ask her.

 

“It’s your accent,” Adrien said. “I just can’t place it. You’re obviously not from around here - well, I mean, that’s obvious, no one lives in Boise County - but I can’t figure out where it is you  _ are _ from.”

 

“Paris,” Marinette began, but before she could continue, Adrien broke in.

 

“Ah, Paris!” he said wistfully. “City of magic, city of light, city of love! Why, I-”

 

“Calm down, Lord Byron,” Marinette interrupted. Despite herself, she was unable to resist a chuckle at Adrien’s exuberance. “Paris,  _ Texas _ . Definitely a step down from the real thing.”

 

“Oh,” Adrien said, clearly disappointed. “That’s a shame. It would have been a wonderful coincidence to meet a fellow Parisian out here in the wilds of Idaho.”

 

“Well, that explains  _ your _ accent,” Marinette said, stepping over an old rotting log that had fallen onto the path. “You’re from the real deal?”

 

“Originally,” Adrien confirmed. “My father moved us to New York City when I was… let’s see, it was 1974, so… when I was ten, and I’ve sounded more and more American every day since.”

 

“Paris, and then New York?” Marinette laughed, stopping to rest for a bit against the trunk of a ponderosa. “What’s a city boy like you doing out here in the sticks?”

 

“Why does anyone come out here?” Adrien retorted. “To get away. To escape. My family fell apart after I graduated high school. Mom left for who knows where, and my dad was never the same. We had a big falling out, and I quit school and basically just ran away as far west as I could manage. I settled in Boise, and I’ve been working for the Service pretty much since then. Been about eight years now.”

 

Marinette was listening carefully, a bit surprised by how interested she was in this man’s life story.

 

“The forest has been good to me,” Adrien continued. “I haven’t heard from my mom or my dad or anyone I used to know in all that time. It’s like as long as I’m out here, the rest of life stands still, and I don’t have to worry about where I’ve been or what’s behind me. As long as I’m out here, I can be free.”

 

For a few brief moments, there was silence, and Marinette took the opportunity to continue back on her path. Before long, however, the now-familiar sound of Adrien’s voice broke through once more.

 

“But I think that’s enough of my life story,” he laughed. “What about you, then, Marinette? What brings a Texas girl all the way out to Idaho?”

 

“It’s a long story,” Marinette said quickly.

 

“It’s going to be a long summer,” Adrien pointed out. “We’ve got the time.”

 

“I… listen, I…” Marinette stammered.

 

“Hey, if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s perfectly fine,” Adrien hurriedly assured her. “I don’t mean to pry where I’m not wanted. I just figured, it’s going to be a long summer and we’ll be talking a lot, so we should probably get to know each other.”

 

“No, it’s fine,” Marinette sighed. “Look, we… we can get into it sometime. Maybe in a few days. For now, let’s just say that a lot of bad things happened to me in fairly rapid succession, and this job seemed like a good way to escape for a while, to keep from having to deal with everything all at once.”

 

“That… that sounds fine to me,” Adrien said. The slick wit was gone from his voice, replaced by a surprising softness and sympathy. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for whatever happened. You seem like a good person, Marinette. You don’t deserve the kind of misfortune that drives a person out here.”

 

“...Thanks,” was Marinette’s reply, following a lengthy pause. “You… you too.”

 

There was a cough from the other line, and what sounded like Adrien clearing his throat, and then he spoke again.

 

“So… so, are you getting close to the campground?” he asked, obviously eager to change the subject.

 

“I think so,” Marinette replied, glancing around. “Should I be able to smell the smoke?”

 

“Probably not,” came the reply. “You’re not looking for a bonfire here, just a smolder, maybe a bit of duff.”

 

“Duff?” Marinette repeated. “That beer from  _ The Simpsons _ ?”

 

“Not quite,” Adrien laughed. “Duff is a lot of what you’re stepping on down on that trail. Old, decaying wood and leaves and things. Duff smolders for a long time after a fire, and extinguishing it is an important part of making sure the fire doesn’t start up again.”

 

“So, I just have to make sure the duff is all the way out, then?” Marinette asked. “How do I do that? Stomp it?”

 

“Sure,” Adrien confirmed. “That can sometimes send sparks flying, though, so I wouldn’t recommend it. Do you have a shovel on you?”

 

“I brought an Army entrenching tool,” Marinette offered, patting her pack, where the tool was stowed. “It was my dad’s, from Korea.”

 

“Perfect,” Adrien said, a smile somehow coming across through the audio. “Just dig out some dirt and smother the embers. That’ll cut off the fire’s access to oxygen.”

 

“Got it,” Marinette said. As she released the talk button, she emerged from the pathway into a spacious patch of land, dotted with ponderosas and bright wildflowers shaking with the grass. At the edge of the land, two mighty, flowing rivers joined together in sparkling confluence, a shimmering body of water whose surface was sporadically disrupted by the splashing of wild fish. The sun shone brightly on the campground, and Marinette, as cliche as it certainly seemed to her, found herself speechless at its pristine natural beauty.

 

“Le Chat Noir to Deadwood,” Adrien’s voice said through the radio. “Come in, Deadwood.”

 

“I thought we agreed not to do the code names,” Marinette replied, annoyed that Adrien had once again interrupted her attempts to appreciate nature.

 

“I think you just don’t like yours,” Adrien argued. “Don’t worry, we’ll find you a good one before the summer’s out. Anyway, you at the campground yet?”

 

“That’s an affirmative,” Marinette replied. She glanced around, finally finding the source of the smoke, a small firepit next to a wooden picnic table. “I have eyes on the target, moving to neutralize.”

 

“Uh… why are you talking like that?” Adrien asked, trying and failing to hold back a giggle.

 

“I… uh… I thought it would sound professional,” Marinette replied, her face reddening. “I, uh, guess I just sounded kind of stupid, huh?”

 

“Stupid? No, no, milady, far from it,” Adrien assured her. “Funny, though. Pretty good impression of how the rangers like to talk, and I always appreciate anything that mocks them. But no, not stupid. It’s cute, in its own way.”

 

“Oh,” Marinette said with a slight smile. “Well, maybe after this summer I should work on developing a national parks-themed standup routine.”

 

“I’d see it,” Adrien chuckled. “We’ll work out the material after you put out the embers.”

 

“Right,” said Marinette, suddenly remembering the purpose of her trip down to the campground. She slid her pack off of her back and onto the picnic table, then retrieved her spade. She gazed for a moment at the wood handle, scarred across by notches her father had cut. Tally marks, one for each day he had spent in Korea. It was the only reminder of him she had brought with her, and it alone made her heart ache.

 

Finally, she dug the head into the ground and pulled up a mound of earth, which she promptly dumped onto the still-glowing embers. The coals protested her assault with a hissing and popping, but she continued in her task until brown dirt covered the firepit and no more smoke wafted from it.

 

“All handled,” she informed Adrien. “Didn’t even have to get my hands dirty to get my hands on that dirt.”

 

“What was that you said before about puns?” Adrien joked.

 

“The difference is,  _ my _ puns are actually  _ good _ ,” Marinette retorted, folding the head of her spade and replacing its cover before returning it to her bag.

 

“If you say so,” Adrien grumbled. “Start heading back to your lookout. I’d hate for you get stuck out there after dark.”

 

“Right,” Marinette said, slipping her pack back over her shoulders and heading back onto the trail.

 

_ A _ trail, anyway. Marinette was quite unaware that it was, in fact, the wrong one.

 

It had begun to get dark by the time Marinette realized that she was not going the right way, and panic began to set in her. She could not recall how many turns she had taken to get to where she was, or where she had taken them. She cursed herself for her own overconfidence, having gotten herself well and truly lost.

 

_ What I get for feeling confident in myself, I guess _ , she grumbled to herself, fumbling around for her radio. “Adrien?” she asked. “Adrien are you there?”

 

No response.

 

The panic began to swell before a thought suddenly crossed her mind and was met with a sigh. “Le Chat Noir,” she said with as much disdain as she could muster. “Are you there.”

 

“This is Le Chat Noir to Deadwood,” came Adrien’s charming,  _ infuriating _ voice in reply. “How can I help you, Deadwood?”

 

“This really isn’t the time, Adrien,” Marinette said with a grimace, her eyes darting around. As darkness settled in the forest, the ponderosas, which had seemed friendly, inviting, and peaceful in the day, looked more menacing and foreboding. “We have a problem. I’m kind of, um, lost.”

 

“Do you have a compass and a map?” Adrien asked.

 

“Well, yes, but-”

 

“Then you’re not lost. Do you know how to orient a map, Marinette?”

 

“I think my dad taught me a long time ago, but I don’t know, I-”

 

“Stay calm, we’ll get through this together. Get your map and compass out.”

 

Marinette did so. “Now what?” she asked.

 

“Alright, now hold your compass to the map. Make sure it’s level. Now turn the map until the compass needle is parallel to the map’s north lines. Once that’s done, he map will be oriented with the terrain.”

 

“Done,” Marinette said, struggling to hit the talk button while still orienting the map properly.

 

Next, check for landmarks. Can you see anything through the trees?”

 

Marinette squinted her eyes, looking as hard as she could. “I see…” she struggled to make out objects through the brush. Finally, she was able to make out, down a slope, a large jut of stone, with a darker area in its middle resembling an entrance. “It looks like there’s a cave down a forested hill. It’s a pretty big hunk of rock from the looks of it.”

 

“That sounds like Danskin Cave to me,” Adrien said. “It used to be a pretty popular place for spelunkers, but there was a collapse down there a few years back, and no one’s been allowed in since.”

 

“It doesn’t look like the entrance is blocked off,” Marinette remarked.

 

“It should be,” Adrien responded. “Even if it’s not, it’s still restricted to visitors. I guess maybe they opened it up so it’s an ‘explore-at-your-own-risk’ type deal. I don’t know, I didn’t get any memo about it.”

 

“So, if I’m at Danskin Cave,” Marinette said, looking at her map and tracing across it with her finger, “that would mean I’m… here. And if I’m here, then to get back to the lookout, I’d follow the trail east until I hit the road, then keep heading north until the turn.”

 

“Congratulations, Deadwood,” Adrien said, “you have added ‘reading a map’ to your list of skills.”

 

“Congratulate me when I get back to the lookout,” Marinette replied. “Until then, we don’t know if-”

 

Marinette turned around, and found herself face-to-face with the biggest animal she had ever seen, a bull moose that stood a full head taller than her. Marinette had no clue how such a large creature had managed to sneak up on her.

 

“Know if what?” Adrien asked. “Marinette? Are you there? Know if what?”

 

Apparently, the moose found Adrien even more annoying than Marinette did, because it started getting agitated, clicking its teeth and raising the hair on its neck.

 

“Adrien,” Marinette hissed. “Adrien, shut up!”

 

“What?” Adrien asked, unheeding. “Marinette, is something wrong? Did you get lost again? Marinette, are you-”

 

The moose had had enough, and pulled its head back before loosing its lungs at Marinette, unleashing a bellow that sounded more like the roar of a lion than something that should have emerged from anything so closely resembling a deer.

 

Marinette shrieked and stumbled back, tripping over a rock and tumbling down the hill. Branches smacked her and stones cut her in her terrifying trip downwards, and when she finally came to rest just outside of Danskin Cave, it had felt like she’d been rolling for hours. Cuts and bruises covered her skin, and while her clothes had not been torn to pieces, she would definitely not be wearing them again for a long while. Somehow, though, her radio and map had survived the fall unharmed - though, when she heard Adrien’s voice again, part of her wished they hadn’t.

 

“Marinette!” Adrien called out in alarm. “What was that?! Are you alright?! Please respond!”

 

“I’m fine,” Marinette reassured him. “Just got cut up a bit. Turns out moose hate your voice, and I ended up taking a tumble down a very rocky hillside.”

 

“And you’re sure you don’t have any deep cuts?” Adrien asked, the urgency in his voice not vanishing with Marinette’s lighthearted response. 

 

“Pretty sure,” Marinette confirmed, glancing about her body. “I’ve got a few bleeders, but nothing life-threatening.”

 

“Well, that’s a relief,” Adrien sighed. “Sorry for spooking the moose, but you’d probably have needed to get down the hill to reach the eastward path anyway, so really it all worked out in the end.”

 

“Except for the cuts and bruises,” Marinette pointed out.

 

“Except for the cuts and bruises,” Adrien agreed in embarrassment. “You’ve got a fully-stocked first aid kit back at your lookout, so we can get you properly patched up once you get back there. Is your map okay?”

 

“Yeah,” Marinette confirmed, grabbing it off of the forest floor. “I can still find my way from here, so-”

 

Marinette was interrupted by a loud sound echoing out of the mouth of the cave. It sounded metallic, like a hammer striking an anvil, and rung out like a wire vibrating in the wind.

 

“Did you hear that?” Marinette asked, peering into the cave. “There was just a weird sound coming out of the cave.”   
  


“Probably just a rock falling,” Adrien said with a somehow-audible shrug. “Like I said, there was a collapse in there years ago, and things probably still haven’t fully settled.”

 

“It didn’t sound natural at all,” Marinette argued, shaking her head. “It sounded metal. I think I should check it out.”

 

“What? No!” Adrien said incredulously. “That is an insanely dangerous idea!”

 

“You said it was our job to help make sure everything was up to snuff,” Marinette replied. “I just want to-”

 

“Marinette, no,” Adrien snapped with an unexpected firmness. “You’re hurt, it’s dark, and you don’t have proper spelunking equipment with you. As your supervisor, I am  _ ordering _ you to stay out of that cave.”

 

“But-”

 

“Don’t argue, Marinette,” Adrien asked, a hint of pleading in his voice. “I don’t like getting authoritative. Just listen to me and do as I say, alright?”

 

Marinette hesitated, wanting to argue, but finally sighed and nodded her head. “Alright,” she conceded.

 

“Good,” Adrien said with a relieved sigh of his own. “It’s only your first day. Maybe you can check out Danskin Cave some other time. Just now now. For now, get back to your lookout, get patched up, and get some rest. We’ve got a long summer ahead of us.”

 

“Right,” Marinette agreed, “a long summer.” She took a long look at her map and then set out, never looking back at the craggy maw of Danskin Cave.

 

The image of that craggy maw, however, remained in the back of her mind all the way back to Deadwood Lookout, and stayed there even as she curled up on her cot, shut her eyes, and drifted off to sleep.

  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
